Exercise: Grounding And Centering Meditation

Make yourself comfortable.  Start with a breathing exercise.... in 2,3,4, hold 2,3,4, out 2,3,4, hold 2,3,4 etc.  Repeat this breathing pattern until you start to feel relaxed, your heartbeat slows and your breath is all you are aware of... narrow your field of awareness down until the breath is everything....  

Close your eyes. Start with the breathing pattern. Feel the earth that is beneath you, feel yourself going down… down into the earth… it is all around you. You are part of the earth as well as still above the ground. You feel yourself starting to take root in the earth... becoming one with the earth, the soil... . Your roots growing deep down  into the cool nourishing earth. Your arms become branches of the tree as you reach out into the world around you.... your roots go deeper into the soil seeking and searching.. There is a place in the centre of your being where you are calm and controlled... find that place....the place where mind body and spirit are one.... when you find that centre send a tap root down into the earth.... send the tap root to seek the place in the earth that matches your centre... when you find it .. link to it... centre to centre... your base.. to keep you linked to the earth... a place where you can shunt excess energy and draw from it as well.... you feel yourself drawing energy from your roots... energy from the earth.... You smell the scent of your leaves, your skin is bark. The tips of your leaves and your branches lightly brush the ground. You feel the nourishment of the earth starting to fill you from your roots deep within the earth. You feel that you have tapped into the energy of the earth, calm, gentle, a natural flow…. You feel the energy of the earth filling you, filling your whole body, filling you as the trunk of the tree, you feel the energy flowing into your branches and your leaves…. When they brush the ground the energy is cycled back into the earth…. There is a full cycle of the energy moving though you, from your roots in the earth, through your body and out through the tips of your leaves and branches, back into the earth. This energy you will draw through your cleansed and open body to use in building your circle or working magic.... you are one with the energy... from centre to centre the energy recognises you as part of itself... it is a natural flow.... in the order of things....   You feel yourself planted solidly in the ground… the natural energies flowing through you and around you. 

(take note of what tree you become... you can use this tree as a shield... its branches protecting you the foliage thick or thin depending on how much you want to let in.... What is the tree.. remember... and what does it mean to you...)

You  slowly disengage your tap root .. taking it back within yourself.... and letting the energy flow return to the earth without cycling through you..... but do this gently.... your tree is part of you now... to be summoned at will..  but you feel yourself returning to your human form... slowly... the roots retract back and your arms are no longer branches..... and you are human once more.... but you can still feel the shield of the tree if you wish it.... and you can send your roots deep into the earth, asking the earth to take into itself the excess energies you have raised, to cleanse you and let you merge and borrow the flow for a while.